"And how's a' wi' ye, Sandy?" said Lord Cairnforth, cheerily, when the old man was rowing him across. "All well at home—at the Castle, the Manse, and the clachan"?
"Ou ay, my lord. Except maybe the minister. He's no weel. He's missing Miss Helen sair."
"Missing Miss Helen!" echoed the earl, turning pale.
"Ay, my lord. She gaed awa—it's just twa days sin syne. She was sair vexed to leave Cairnforth and the minister."
"Leave her father?"
"A man maun leave father and mither, and cleave unto his wife—the scripture says it. And a woman maun just do the like for her man, ye ken. Miss Helen's awa to France, or some sic place, wi' her husband, Captain Bruce."
The earl was sitting in the stern of the ferry-boat alone, no one being near him but Sandy, and Malcolm, who had taken the second oar. To old Sandy's communication he replied not a word—asked not a single question more—and was lifted out at the end of the five-minutes' passage just as usual. But the two men, though they also said nothing, remembered the expression of his face to their dying day.
"Take me home, Malcolm; I will go to the Manse another time. Carry me in your arms—the quickest way."
Malcolm lifted his master, and carried him, just as in the days when the earl was a child, through the pleasant woods of Cairnforth, up to the Castle door.
Nobody had expected them, and there was nothing ready.